Effects of wildlife protection on plasmodium diversity

Hypothesis: Does wild life protection have an effect on the the plasmodium diversity within PTT primates of the western region?

We assume that wildlife protected areas are less effected by human population. Possible mechanisms of an relationship include humans applying pesticides to kill the mosquito populations, deforestation to harm the monkey population, industry outputting chemicals that kill either population, etc.

Hence, our study would benefit from additional knowledge of the human population, proximity of each sampling site to human communities, how industrialized are these areas, are pesticides ever used to control mosquito populations etc. This can better inform on the selection of samplings sites to compare in order to best maximize the possible effect of human life on monkeys mosquitoes, and plasmodium diversity.

To test our hypothesis, we compared 5 plasmodium from a wild life and non-wild life within the western region. These sites were geographically close to minimize the effect of distance on phylogenetic diversity.

As control cases, we compared two wild-life population and two non-wildlife population against each other to see if the diversity were equal to that between wildlife and non-wild populations. This would essentially work against our hypothesis and make it unlikely that the diversity observed between wildlife and non-wildlife pouplations are significant.

Figure 1. Wildlife protection site (BB) vs. nonwildlife (BQ)

Figure 2. Two nonwildlife populations (BQ, DQ)

Figure 3. Two wildlife populations (BB, ME)

The populations for the test case and the two control cases were not significantly different enough to cluster into distinctive groups.

Conclusion: Our trees suggest that wildlife protection may not have a detectable effect on plasmodium diversity.